Presidency makes announcement nearly a week after wave of violence hit South American country
Scores of hostages have been released from Ecuador’s gang-controlled prisons, the government has claimed, nearly a week after the South American country was shaken by a massive wave of violence.
“All of the hostages have been freed,” the Ecuadorian presidency announced on social media on Saturday night.
Continue reading...After criminals storm TV station and take prison guards hostage, Daniel Noboa pledges to stop his country becoming a narco-state
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has denied that his government is embarking on an indiscriminate campaign to hunt down and kill gang members, as the South American country continues to reel from a week of chaos and deadly violence that he has classified as a war.
In his first interviews since the turmoil began last Monday, Ecuador’s 36-year-old leader said he was determined to stop his country becoming a “narco-state” and believed the only way to do so was with a hardline crackdown on the organised crime groups bringing “terror” to its prison system and streets.
Continue reading...As cartels and crime syndicates flock to Ecuador for cocaine trade profits, its murder rate has soared, with a TV station assault the crescendo of a week of bloodshed
Political upheaval and street protests, gun battles and floods. José Luis Calderón has seen it all during his 23 years as one of Guayaquil’s top television journalists. Never had the Ecuadorean reporter been the story himself.
That changed just after lunch last Tuesday when the 47-year-old reporter heard shouts and the sound of people running in the corridors of TC Televisión, the channel where he works. “At first … we thought it was a fight,” he remembered. But as the yelling intensified, it became clear it was not.
Continue reading...Laser-sensor technology reveals network of earthen mounds and buried roads in rainforest area of Ecuador
Archaeologists have uncovered a cluster of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest that was home to at least 10,000 farmers about 2,000 years ago.
A series of earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador was first noticed more than two decades ago by archaeologist Stéphen Rostain. But at the time, “I wasn’t sure how it all fit together,” said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported on the finding in the journal Science on Thursday.
Continue reading...Guayaquil eerily quiet as armed forces patrol in wake of stunning wave of arson, bombings and prison riots that killed as many as 15
Ecuador’s largest city has been transformed into a virtual ghost town by a stunning wave of criminal violence that prompted the South American country’s recently elected president to declare his country was in “a state of war”.
On Thursday, the streets of Guayaquil – a normally teeming port city of about 3 million residents – remained eerily quiet after a succession of arson attacks, car bombings, shootings and prison riots in different parts of the country claimed as many as 15 lives.
Continue reading...Daniel Noboa designates nearly two dozen gangs as terrorist groups after wave of violence across country
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, said on Wednesday that his country was “at war” with drug gangs who are holding more than 130 prison staff hostage and who briefly captured a TV station live on air, in a wave of violence that has left city streets deserted.
At least 10 people have been killed, including police officers, in the attacks.
Continue reading...President declares state of ‘internal armed conflict’ as gang leader escapes from jail and gunmen invade TV studio
Few Ecuadoreans were prepared for just how swiftly and steeply the security situation in their country could plummet. Murder and violence linked to drug trafficking has soared, as the country has become one of the most dangerous in Latin America.
Until just a few years ago, Ecuador was a corner of relative peace sandwiched between the world’s two biggest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, which have recently seen their own violent internal conflicts between security forces and nominally leftist rebels linked to the lucrative drugs trade.
Continue reading...Ecuador’s president has declared a state of “internal armed conflict”. How did the country find itself in the grip of armed gangs?
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Good morning. At about 2pm local time yesterday, a live news broadcast on an Ecuadorian TV channel was interrupted by a group of masked men carrying guns, grenades, and dynamite. The intruders pointed guns at employees and made them lie on the floor. “Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot!” one person shouted. One of the attackers said the attack was the result of “messing with the mafias”. The TC Televisión broadcast continued for at least 15 minutes. Then the signal was cut off.
Some 13 gunmen were later arrested, and the hostages taken to safety. The astonishing scenes in the city of Guayaquil were part of a series of audacious coordinated attacks by members of Ecuadorian gangs that have killed at least 10 people. They follow the escape from prison of the country’s most feared gang leader, Adolfo Macías, and new president Daniel Noboa’s subsequent declaration of a state of emergency. And while the situation is evolving rapidly, it appears to represent a declaration of war on the country’s fragile democratic institutions.
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Israel-Gaza war | The British government has accepted that Israel as an occupying power had a legal duty to provide basic supplies to the people of Gaza. David Cameron, the foreign secretary, told MPs that Israel should remove barriers on the delivery of humanitarian aid that were risking “real, widespread hunger”.
Climate crisis | 2023 has smashed the record for the world’s hottest year by a huge margin. The planet was 1.48C hotter in 2023 compared with the period before the mass burning of fossil fuels ignited the climate crisis, scientists have said.
Child protection | Boys are watching violent porn on their smartphones then going on to attack girls, police have said, as new data showed children are now the biggest perpetrators of sexual abuse against other children. Overall, the data shows a quadrupling of sexual offences against children.
US news | A group of men belonging to a Hasidic Jewish community in New York were arrested on Monday amid a dispute over an illegal tunnel secretly dug into the side of a historic synagogue, which has since been closed. Action by law enforcement after the tunnel came to light led to a brawl with those who had created the passageway.
Continue reading...Gangsters unleashed wave of terror following move by President Daniel Noboa in response to gang leader’s prison escape
Heavily armed gangsters have stormed the studio of a major television station in Ecuador during a live broadcast, prompting the country’s president to declare a state of “internal armed conflict” amid a series of seemingly coordinated attacks across the South American country.
Police special forces later arrested all the masked gunmen who invaded the headquarters of the TC Televisión network in Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, at about 2pm local time on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Huge manhunt under way after Adolfo Macías of Los Choneros disappears from cell and guards taken hostage amid prison riots
Ecuador has declared a state of emergency after one of the country’s most dangerous criminals vanished from his cell and prison guards were overpowered and taken hostage amid riots at prisons across the country.
A huge manhunt was under way on Monday as thousands of soldiers and police searched for Adolfo Macías, alias Fito, the convicted leader of the powerful drug gang Los Choneros.
Continue reading...Police say Colin Armstrong safe and well after being kidnapped with his partner on Saturday
A British businessman and former UK honorary consul has been released four days after being kidnapped in Ecuador, police have said.
Colin Armstrong, 78, was kidnapped in the early hours of Saturday with a Colombian woman identified as his partner, Katherine Paola Santos, from his home in the town of Baba, according to a police report seen by the Guardian. He was driven away in his own black BMW, which was later found dumped, the report said.
Continue reading...The 78-year-old was driven away in his own BMW alongside his Colombian partner, according to a police report
A British businessman and the former UK honorary consul in Guayaquil, Colin Armstrong, has been kidnapped by hooded men at his home in Ecuador’s Los Rios province, according to police reports.
Armstrong, 78, was snatched in the early hours of Saturday alongside a Colombian woman identified as his partner Katherine Paola Santos from his home in the town of Baba, according to a police report seen by the Guardian. He was driven away in his own black BMW, which was later found dumped, the report said.
Continue reading...Food and Drug Administration is investigating facility in Ecuador and working with authorities to inspect cinnamon supplier
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday said it thinks elevated levels of lead in cinnamon applesauce that has poisoned dozens of American children could be linked to deliberate additives in the food’s cinnamon flavoring, and is inspecting a food facility in Ecuador.
There have been more than 60 reports of children reporting “adverse effects” after eating applesauce and apple puree pouches from the brands WanaBana, Schnucks and Weis. The products have been recalled.
Continue reading...Secrecy and lax oversight mean illegal loggers and miners in Amazon can park billions in real estate and other assets
Secrecy and lax oversight have made the US a hiding place for dirty money accrued by environmental criminals in the Amazon rainforest, a report says.
Illegal loggers and miners are parking sums ranging from millions to billions of dollars in US real estate and other assets, says the report, which calls on Congress and the White House to close loopholes in financial regulations that it says are contributing to the destruction of the world’s biggest tropical forest.
Continue reading...Luisa González, handpicked by Rafael Correa as successor, loses to 35-year-old who promises tough line on violent crime and cocaine trafficking
Daniel Noboa, the heir to a banana fortune who pledges a hard line on rocketing violent crime, employment for the young and foreign investment, will become Ecuador’s youngest ever president at 35 after winning by a margin of around five points over his rival, the leftist lawyer Luisa González.
With 90% of votes counted on Sunday night in Ecuador, Noboa had 52.29% of the vote against 47.71% for González, according to Ecuador’s electoral council.
Continue reading...The country goes to the polls this weekend after a campaign marked by bloodshed and the assassination of a candidate
Ecuadoreans will this weekend choose between a centre-right presidential candidate who is the scion of one of country’s wealthiest families, and a leftist disciple of the former president Rafael Correa, in an election overshadowed by violent crime and the assassination of a third candidate.
Polls ahead of Sunday’s vote put the banana industry heir Daniel Noboa, 35, slightly ahead of Luisa González, who has promised free medicine and increased worker protections.
Continue reading...People are ahead of governments, says David Cooper, who blames backtracking on parties seeking ‘wedge issues’ for electoral gain
Government backtracking on environmental promises is being driven by politicians and vested interests, not the public, the acting UN biodiversity chief has said, as he called for greater support for those experiencing short-term costs from green policies.
David Cooper, acting executive secretary for the UN convention on biological diversity (CBD), told the Guardian he believed the public mood was not moving against greater environmental protections, and that vested interests opposed to action on the climate crisis and nature loss were trying to frustrate progress.
Continue reading...The six Colombians had been arrested on the day Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead in August
Six men suspected of involvement in the August murder of Ecuador’s anti-corruption presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio have been killed in prison, the prisons agency has said, barely a week before a crucial run-off election.
The killings took place on Friday in a penitentiary in Guayaquil, the South American country’s largest city, the attorney general’s office announced earlier.
Continue reading...Scientists confirm three birds have died from virus as park authorities redouble efforts to protect islands’ endemic birds
National park authorities on the Galápagos Islands have heightened biosecurity measures to protect the archipelago’s unique fauna from the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza after scientists confirmed that three birds had died from the virus.
“From preliminary tests of the five specimens, three of them have tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza,” Danny Rueda, director of the Galápagos national park told the Guardian. Two frigate birds and one red-footed booby were confirmed to have died from the virus on Tuesday, after samples were sent to Guayaquil on the Ecuadorian mainland for examination.
Continue reading...Fifty-seven law enforcement officers held in six prisons amid sharp rise in gang violence ahead of election
Fifty guards and seven police officers have been released, Ecuadorian authorities said, after being held hostage in several prisons for more than a day.
The country’s corrections system, the National Service for Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty, said in a statement that the 57 law enforcement officers, who were held in six different prisons, were safe, but did not offer details about how they were released.
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